Tim Ainsworth is Executive Director of Brand Experience at McCann Manchester and NDA’s monthly columnist.
Excess share of voice versus market share: why this (and every other methodology) needs a facelift to explain how marketing works and brands are built.
Like many, I have long admired the work of Mark Ritson for two simple reasons: 1) he is (almost) singlehandedly reintroducing the marketing industry to its core principles and the foundations on which brands are built and 2) he does it in an entertaining way.
His Mini MBA was what inspired the team in Manchester to collaborate with UA92 on the creation of the McCANN Manchester digital marketing degree, which has been a great success in its commitment to training the next generation in real world, practical and core principles of marketing and welcomes its next cohort of students in September.
In preparing course materials for the degree, I have revisited many of the fundamental principles of marketing: looking at each methodology’s usefulness in modern practice, the impact of AI on its democratisation, application and adoption.
The problem that hits us every time is that the vast majority of the industry is obsessed with marketing communications: one small component of the overall mix. And, I would argue that the industry has never been more divorced from the fundamentals of marketing.
But, that presents us with huge opportunity, perhaps, if we take the horse to water a little more, rather than pulling it back into the traditional classroom.
For instance, I was recently in a pitch for a media account. In truth, I have a great team and there are only so many ways to craft a comms or media plan. AI has also learned all of them and is in the process of automating their execution.
We could have pitched the account in 4 slides: strategy, plan, measurement and commercials. We ended up with 50. Why? No, not because we spent 46 talking about us and our creds. We talked about context and hit on the nuance of orchestrated impact in the wider marketing and brand operating system.
For instance, every strategist worth their salt will have built arguments on Gain Theory and other’s excellent work relating to the correlation of Excess Share of Voice to Market Share growth. 10 years ago, it might have won you the pitch.
Now, it’s just another slide in the deck. All boats have risen. Plus, the problem with this model is two-fold: 1) you have to have the capital to achieve the ESOV in the first place and 2) it assumes all other aspects of the brand experience are equal (and firing on all cylinders according to category norm). Both often also fail because the CMO doesn’t have the confidence of the CFO to release the investment because the business case is soft and the marketer is an expert in comms, not marketing.
When we applied the above model to the pitch, one thing was very clear: the ESOV in media was not translating into increased brand visibility. A lot has been said about the cost of dull in advertising lately (the amount of media dollars required to back a poor creative versus one that sings), but little has been said about the impact of all of the other marketing levers that might be holding back a brand’s performance; the spread of SEO across social and Chat GPT being just one example.
So, we started to create methods that orchestrate insight across the typical methodology to look at other influencers of brand impact: such as Excess Share of Visibility (meaning how visible is your brand across its ecosystem and how is that influencing the media investment, per se.
It’s nuance, but it’s nuance that takes you out of a typical answer, beyond AI and moves the marketer closer to a position of greater knowledge and orchestration. It’s nuance that moves the practitioner to investigate cause and effect and with a tighter view on the commercial lense. It also doesn’t necessarily mean you need to go back to university immediately to progress.
And, critically, nuance is where future value lies when automation and AI has ingested every other methodology and spat out the same plan as everyone else. If you want to keep your job and beat the LLM, rise above the tide, always ask “yes, but…” or “yes, and…” and orchestrate beyond the traditional.
And, maybe go back to the fundamentals, too, if you have the time.
